I Have Been One Acquainted With the Night
by Tom O'Bedlam
Summary: I have walked out in rain and back in rain. Tonks visits her mother.


_**(A/N)** This has been floating around in my head for awhile, and I think I like the outcome. I went very ellipsis-happy; forgive me, they just seemed right, you know. I own very little of this; Pyramus Austin is mine, and I'm quite enamorned of him, but pretty much nothing else is. The title is from Robert Frost's poem of the same name. As always, reviews are heaven-sent._

Nymphadora Tonks stepped off the Apparation platform, wand ready. She wasn't expecting to be attacked, exactly, but the graveyard had the same paranoid feeling as Grimmauld Place, and it made her nervous. There was nothing particularly threatening about the scenery: soft mist settled around marble and granite monuments and drifted down the hills to settle, like liquid crystal, in the luscious green valleys. Nothing particularly threatening. Except the half-buried knowledge that some of the country's most powerful wizards rested here, and considering some of their hobbies, there was always the worry that said rest was unnervingly impermanent.

Chin up, reminding herself that she was an Auror, not to be scared by goulies and ghosties and things that went bump in the night, Tonks climbed to one of the high cliffs overlooking a wide mountain lake. The summit that held the graves of the Blacks. She wouldn't have come here in the usual way, but someone (no one had ever told her who) had insisted that Andromeda Black be laid to rest with her ancestors, so every year Nymphadora Tonks made her annual pilgrimage to the mostly unknown burial mound for the Old Families.

It was not a place most people knew about, Tonks was sure. She was personally acquainted with three or four members of the Ministry who would have six kinds of fit if they learned that there was a very private graveyard for only descendents of the original wizarding families.

The wind picked up as Tonks scrambled up the rough slope, ignoring the well-tended path that swooped in a gradual curve up the hill, designed to be climbable in any sort of ridiculous fashion. Because she was tired, and because this was the one time of year she forced herself to think about the family that had helped mould her, Tonks heard the little whispers in the wind…

_You would have loved him, Theo; he has the same smile in his eyes that you always did…_

_Why, Capella? You always said you'd come back to me…_

_I'm getting married, Father. I don't know whether you'd approve of her, but I love her…_

_Pié Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem sempiternam…_

_I hope it was worth it for you, Germaine, because it's awful for us here…_

_I didn't want to be in charge, Papa; you weren't supposed to die for years and years yet…_

Tonks found the whispers strangely comforting, because it meant she wasn't the only one who had long conversations with people who could no longer hear. That was why she always came here instead of visiting the pretty little Muggle cemetery that held her father, and had another gravestone for her mother. There was never anyone here, to hear you tell your mother all your problems, to let out all the joys and petty griefs, to hear that you missed her. Here, also, where her body way, maybe, just maybe, she might hear you in whatever heaven she now inhabited, and know her daughter still loved her.

"…and you would laugh, dear, if you knew how little I went out now." At first Tonks thought it was one of the ghostly wind-voices, but there was a real quality about it that they never had. She'd just reached the summit, and the marble edifices between her and the cliff all belonged to her ancestors. Some previous visitor had left a white rose on every Black grave, even those so old their names were illegible except to those who already knew them. "I play chess with Phineus Nigellus a great deal, now that I brought his picture to the Manor. Pyramus Austin comes most weekends to tell me what happens in the world outside the grounds…"

Tonks finally found the speaker, a black-cloaked figure sitting amide the marble monuments to Regulus and Sirius Black. Tonks had never found out who had build the monument for Sirius, either, she supposed it was the same sacrilegious member the dying community of the Old Families who had brought back the shamed Andromeda, who had married a Muggle.

"…lives in town now, though he comes to visit at least once a month, good boy that he is. Sometimes he brings his family, and I can see that my grandson loves the Manor quite as well as his grandfather did. I makes me happy, to the house wake up for someone again…"

As Tonks wove her way through the graves, reluctant to give up her pilgrimage because of some other mysterious visitor, but equally reluctant to disturb the tranquil voice. It was somehow familiar. Not commonplace, like Andromeda's laugh, or Ted's puns, but something she'd heard at least once before.

"Pyramus has begun his magnum opus, dear. It's dedicated to you. I can almost hear you laughing about that, and telling him not to be a prat, but he's convinced that you're the epitome of a Romantic hero, a genius cut down in his prime. He got the idea when someone commissioned him to write something for Sirius and Harry Potter. He's using the Greek epitaph at the beginning of Shelley's _Adonais_ for you: 'Thou wert the morning star amongst the living, Ere thy fair light had fled--Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendor to the dead.' Pyramus is very enamored of Shelley right now…"

It was almost there. Standing almost six feet from the speaker, Tonks could see that this had been who had left the flowers on the Black graves. A whole bouquet of white roses rested on Regulus's grave, and a bundle of honeysuckle on Andromeda's. There were bright red poppies for Sirius, and a deep red rose of Bellatrix. Tonks shied away from even the name of her aunt, remembering the lists of people to whom she owed a life's debt.

"You'd like the new generation of the family, I think. Andromeda's daughter and the werewolf have a little girl, and I think they are very happy together. I wonder if they would let me invite her for a tea party to meet her second cousin. Draco won't like it, of course; no amount of work for the Ministry will let him forget the hatreds of his schooldays. But I would like her to know about the rest of her family. I don't suppose Nymphadora would allow it, though. It would be like a Muggle asking us to tea when we were young. Anyone who was involved with the Death Eaters is shunned so much that most parents would be horrified by an invitation to Malfoy Manor. How things change…"

Tonks froze at the sound of her name. Second cousins? Malfoy Manor? But that meant…. Just as the identity of the stranger sunk in completely, an unruly breeze swept up and blew the deep hood away from the woman's face. Tonks found herself looking straight at a perfect, pale face, doll-like in its symmetry, surrounded by gold curls. Narcissa Malfoy was no longer the princess Tonks had met at the age of six, but she was still beautiful. A dowager queen, perhaps, one of those few blessed with the skill at aging beautifully.

As Narcissa turned to fix her cloak, she saw Tonks standing in the shadow of Alphred Black's tomb. Tonks knew, because blue eyes met black ones, and the refined Mrs. Malfoy gasped and looked quickly away. When Narcissa looked back at her niece, the perfect, pretty face was composed and smooth again, but Tonks noticed that the deep peace in her aunt's eyes had been replaced by a cool, reasoning look.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," Tonks began awkwardly, not quite sure how to greet such an apparition.

"No, I apologize," Narcissa said, before Tonks could begin to explain why she hadn't said anything before. "I shouldn't have been gossiping about your life, even to the dead."

"I don't mind," Tonks said automatically. For the first time, it became very clear to her that this woman was her mother's sister. That way of saying something so that the only thing one could conceivably reply was that it was all right; that natural impulse Andromeda had drilled into her daughter to always, always be polite when in Company.

"I was just coming to talk to my mother." Somehow she didn't mind admitting to this distant "princess-aunty" what she was still embarrassed about telling Remus, even after she'd heard him discussing a new brand of chocolate with Sirius's monument.

"I'll leave you in peace, then. I've just finished my conversation with Regulus." Narcissa stood, resting her hand lightly on the black-veined marble of her cousin's gravestone before turning to make her way through the Black plot.

Tonks watched her go for a moment before thinking of something. "How did you know it was me?" She was un-morphed today, as she always was when she visited her mother, and no had ever gotten a proper picture of her like that. But Andromeda had always liked her best with her real features.

Narcissa paused by Polaris Black's monument and looked up at her niece. "With that nose, my dear, you could only be a Black, and there aren't that many of us left." Narcissa paused for a moment, then added carefully, "Give my love to Andra, would you? I'm never sure if she listens to me."

"Of course." Again, the response was automatic. It was the only polite thing you could say. Narcissa nodded once, then turned, and with a slight swish of black cape, was gone.

----------------------------------------------

Two weeks later, Tonks came home to find her husband gaping at the mail. Among the bills and postcards and junk mail was a single old-fashioned envelope, pale pink, embossed with flowers, and scented with narcissus.


End file.
